Academic blogs attract growing audience

Academic blogs attract growing audience
Rice faculty and staff bloggers say online writings help raise profile

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice academics are joining the small but growing ranks of those who are taking up blogging as a way to broaden their academic communication. While academic blogs are still relatively rare, communicating via a blog does have some advantages.

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As NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, author of a popular science blog, said in a Nature Geosciences commentary earlier this year, “Blogs are one communication tool that can supply more depth than is found in traditional media. They provide a rapid, casual, interactive and occasionally authoritative way of commenting on current issues, new papers or old controversies.”

Rice News recently contacted three of Rice’s academic bloggers to discuss their experiences.

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April DeConick
The Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies
Blog name: “The Forbidden Gospels”
http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/

Q: Why do you blog?

A: I blog because I am concerned that the general public is getting poor information about the field of biblical studies and early Christianity from other sources of information, including religious institutions and the media. I consider my blog to be an extended university classroom, and many of my discussions on my blog develop out of classroom discussions that occur between my students and me. I understand my blog audience to be people who are interested in the field but may not have an opportunity to enroll in a college course. Secondarily, my blog allows me to interact informally with new literature and ideas that are emerging in the field, to offer reviews of books and articles for informative purposes rather than critical.

Q: Does it make you a better academic? If so, how?

A: Yes. Blogging makes me a better academic because it increases my visibility, name recognition and credibility among the public and among academics who read blogs (which are many more than one might think). It hones my public writing skills, allows me to test new ideas outside of formal publication and get feedback. It allows me to have a public voice consistently and persistently between formal publications. I can let people know what I’m working on, when the project will be finished and when it is released in a published form and so forth.

Q: Is there a downside?

A: You have to protect yourself and write well, to never forget that what you write as a blog may not be a formal publication, but it is probably read by more people than any formal publication ever will. In a given day I have almost 300 readers, and this number is increasing every year! This is phenomenal.

Q: What made you start your blog?

A: I saw that the biblioblogs were dominated by people (mostly male) who are interested in the canonical Bible. So I wanted to give a space for reflection (from a female professor) on the works that the early Christians wrote but which did not find their way into the Bible. My blog is a place for heresy to be orthodoxy.

Q: What do your peers think? What do students think?

A: Well, my blog has recruited students already into the Rice graduate program. Whenever I am lecturing to a public body or attending a conference, I am approached by people I don’t know but who know me through my blog and who thank me for writing the blog. My students love it and use it to keep in touch with me and the field even after graduation. In fact, one just wrote me last week that law school certainly makes him miss religious studies but that he still feels connected because he reads my blog and talks about it with another graduated Rice student.

Q: How much time does it take?

A: It will take as much time as I let it. Usually I give it 30 minutes each morning, but this can stretch to one hour if I have something vital to communicate.

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Doug Natelson
Associate professor of physics and astronomy
Blog name: “Nanoscale Views”
http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/

Q: Why do you blog?

A: I started blogging (in summer 2005) in large part because I didn’t see any significant Web presence for discussions about my area of science, condensed matter physics. There were lots of blogs about high-energy physics and astronomy/astrophysics but essentially none about solid-state physics. The target audience started out as — and largely remains — graduate students (and interested undergrads) and my peers. Over time, though, the actual readership seems to have evolved and includes some science journalists, some journal editors and some funding-officer types.

Q: How much time does it take?

A: It doesn’t take much time — blogs tend to be formatted in a way that a couple of ordinary paragraphs look much longer than they really are.

Q: What do you get out of it?

A: Sometimes it’s a chance to vent, and sometimes it’s a chance to pass on or call attention to results or papers that I think are particularly exciting. It can be fun having conversations (through the comments) with people all over the world.

Q: Does it help or hurt you in the eyes of your peers?

A: I don’t think it hurts me in the eyes of my peers; the most common reaction is that they wish they had the time to spend on it. I try to tell them that it doesn’t really take much time.

Q: Any funny or interesting anecdotes about the blog?

A: I don’t have too many funny or interesting stories. On occasion I’ve had people say at conferences, “Oh, I read your blog!” It has been an interesting lesson in sociology. People sometimes say things in blog comments that I’m sure they’d never have the nerve to say in a face-to-face environment. I had one recurring commenter on my blog who wrote anonymously but had revealed himself to me. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff this person would say online.

Q: Have you gotten comments online from people you were surprised to learn were readers?

A: I was rather surprised to have a couple of Nature Publishing Group editors commenting on my blog at one point.

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Lisa Spiro
Director of the Digital Media Center and director of ETRAC, Fondren Library
Blog name: “Digital Scholarship in the Humanities”
http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/

Q: Why do you blog?

A: I blog to share my ongoing research on the significance of information technology for the humanities with colleagues in the digital humanities community and beyond. I blog to get feedback from readers about my work. I blog to motivate myself to write more frequently about my research. I blog because it’s fun to play with ideas, write in a more casual tone than the typical academic essay and engage in a conversation with readers. Fundamentally, I blog to participate in a community.

Q: What do you get out of it?

A: In the year that I’ve been blogging, I feel like I’ve grown as a researcher and have had a lot of fun in the process. I’ve actually blogged about blogging, which I know is very meta. See http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/why-blog/ and http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/becoming-a-digital-scholar-digital-discovery-2008/)

Q: How does it make you a better academic?

A: When I publish an article in an academic journal, I’m frustrated by how long it typically takes to prepare and submit a manuscript, have it peer-reviewed, make revisions and finally see it published. After it’s published, I have no idea what kind of impact it has, if any. I’m also disappointed by how the audience is limited to other specialists in my field. In contrast, when I blog, I can quickly circulate my ideas and reach a broad audience. (I’ve received comments from chemists and amateur historians, as well as fellow digital humanities researchers.) Although far more people read my blog than offer comments, readers do point me to relevant resources, challenge my methods and open up new ways of thinking. Blogging has also made me much more visible as a researcher. In the year that I’ve been blogging, for instance, I’ve been invited to write a review for one major journal; review manuscripts for another journal, a conference and a publisher; and serve as a judge for a prize recognizing the best historical blog. The irony: The more I accept professional commitments, the less time I have to blog.

Q: Is there a downside?

A: It does take time to blog, so sometimes I either feel guilty that I’m not blogging enough or worry that I’m spending too much time blogging. I’ve also had to grapple with my fear of exposing my ignorance or naivete by releasing into the world ideas that are only half-baked. But the pleasures of blogging — working through ideas, engaging in ongoing conversations — far outweigh the downsides.

Q: What made you start?

A: About a year ago, I launched a project to explore what it means — and takes — to produce digital scholarship in the humanities by remixing my 2002 dissertation as a work of digital scholarship. I wanted to practice what’s known as “social scholarship,” openly sharing my research and making transparent my research process. I was also inspired to blog because whenever I read blogs, I learn something and feel inspired.

Q: What do your peers think?

A: From what peers have told me, they like my blog. It has been viewed more than 70,000 times by people around the world. I’ve gotten fan letters from an official at the National Endowment for the Humanities, directors of digital humanities centers and grad school buddies. My posts have been assigned for courses on topics such as new media communications and public history. (I know because I’ve seen students’ blog posts about my blog posts, which is kind of weird.) People come up to me at conferences and say how much they like my blog.

Q: Any funny or interesting anecdotes about the blog?

A: Hmmm … I was surprised and flattered when a series of posts I wrote summarizing the year in digital humanities was translated into Spanish.

Q: How much time does it take?

A: It depends. Some people make a commitment to blog daily, or at least every few days. I practice what’s called “slow blogging,” which is more meditative. I’ll go weeks without blogging, then come out with what amounts to a short essay. It takes me about 30 minutes to write a short post but five hours or more to produce a longer post.

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Other blogs by Rice faculty, staff and students include:

Mahmoud El-Gamal
Chair of Islamic Economics, Finance and Management and professor of economics and of statistics
Blog name: “Islam and Economics”
http://elgamal.blogspot.com/

Jill Carroll
Executive director of the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance
Blog name: “Talking Tolerance”
http://blogs.chron.com/talkingtolerance/

Carolyn Nichol
Associate director for education, Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology
Blog name: “NanoEd”
http://www.nanoed.blogspot.com/

Richard Johnson
Director of sustainability, Facilities, Engineering and Planning
Blog name: “Greening the Campus”
http://greeningthecampus.wordpress.com/

Neal Lane
The Malcolm Gillis University Professor and senior fellow in science and technology policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Blog name: “How You Can Save the World”
http://howyoucansavetheworld.com/contributors/neal_lane/

Debra Kolah
Reference/collection development librarian, Fondren Library
Blog name: “Debra Kolah”
http://debrakolah.typepad.com/

Erkan Saka
Graduate student, Anthropology
Blog name: “Erkan’s Field Diary”
http://erkansaka.net/

Undergraduate summer interns
Beyond Traditional Borders
Blog name: “Owls Beyond Borders”
http://www.owlsbeyondborders.rice.edu/